Mamdani appoints lawyer for radicals to transition team

Kassem recently headlined a hybrid “know-your-rights” rally in support of Columbia student activist Yunseo Chung at The People’s Forum and emphasized legal strategies for protesters facing heightened scrutiny.

In an event associated with the violent pro-Hamas group Within Our Lifetime (WOL), Kassem helped lead “Emergency Session: A Survival Guide to Arrests and Jail Support,” outlining the different risks protesters face based on immigration status. In a clip circulated by organizers, Kassem explains that visa-holders must exercise greater caution during direct actions compared to US citizens, underscoring the legal vulnerabilities of “non-citizen” demonstrators.

A WOL “tool kit” lays out a playbook for organizing campus and citywide protests, complete with propaganda templates and suggested chants, including slogans like “Globalize the Intifada,” interpreted by critics as calls for violent uprising, and instructions on logistics, security, and media handling. The toolkit advises activists to avoid cooperation with police, designate internal security, prepare jail-support for arrestees, and mask their identities if they do not want to be identified, presenting the campaign as the product of “nearly a decade” of organizing experience rather than spontaneous student activism.

Kassem was serving as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Biden White House, even while simultaneously advising WOL, one of the most visible anti-Israel activist groups in New York.

Kassem was also involved in preparing the radicals for actions planned around the anniversary of October 7, offering guidance on how to protest “more safely when the risks are higher.”

In past remarks, he argued that the attacks of September 11 reflected “the resentment these terrorists felt,” and asserted that “the legacy of 9/11 ought to be recounted primarily through the stories of Muslims.”

Kassem was previously awarded a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship in 2001, Paul Soros being the brother of financier George Soros, to pursue legal studies at Columbia.

More recently, Kassem was honored by the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations with its Defender of Truth Award.

CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terror financing trial in US history. The group is followed by allegations of ties to individuals or groups implicated in terror-related investigations.

CAIR endorsed Mamdani and other candidates across the US closely associated with radical anti-American and anti-Israel movements. CAIR’s political arm has increasingly backed figures who champion demands such as police abolition, anti-Israel positions, and direct-action protests.

Kassem is not the only controversial figure elevated by Mamdani’s transition. For his Community Safety transition committee, Mamdani tapped Brooklyn College sociologist Alex S. Vitale, a leading police-abolition theorist and author of The End of Policing, a 2017 book that argues “the problem is policing itself” and calls for replacing law enforcement with non-police interventions. Vitale joins a roster stacked with long-time anti-police and abolition activists including Joo-Hyun Kang, Jose Lopez, Dana Rachlin, and Erica Ford.

He also named Tamika Mallory to his team, who was ousted from her leadership from the Women’s March for her rabid antisemitism, was accused of financial mismanagement during her role in BLM and is tied to radical antisemite Louis Farrakahn.